In any legal business, the ability to operate is at the discretion of the government. This is particularly true in banking, where a licence has traditionally been akin to a financial system sinecure.
Now, ultra-low and negative central bank interest rates in Europe have cut or removed the profit banks used to make from attracting deposits at low or zero rates just by placing them at the central bank.
At the same time, since the crisis, the state has imposed on banks all manner of new and more onerous requirements around capital and customer verification, while making it much harder to boost their profits through opaque loan and savings products.
Rates, regulation and fintech competition are already pushing big banks to become more efficient.
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